My mother in law said she would have identfied what La Mer depicted without reading the programme in advance.?

I argue with her that most listeners, even experts, generally could not correctly guess the composers programme for most tone poems, symphonies etc.





Have you ever played a piece for someone and they correctly guessed the programme? Eg-Play La Mer and they guessed that it depicts the Ocean?My mother in law said she would have identfied what La Mer depicted without reading the programme in advance.?
I don't think anyone could identify it either. If Debussy had claimed that it represented something entirely different I doubt that anyone would ever question it. My mother in law said she would have identfied what La Mer depicted without reading the programme in advance.?
La Mer and other tone poems have been so ripped off over the years, especially for film, and cartoons, that we have those visual associations with the COPIES -so when we hear the original, we go AHAH! Less-popular tone poems, or those with more arcane association, would of course be harder. But those gushing, flowing effects - pretty easy one. Think of Great Gate at Kiev - sounds like something bag, massive, formidable - power, army, stone - but that is another easy one.





Think Planets - then all the outer-space things that John Williams wrote. Or Copland - Appalachian Spring - and then all the Marlboro-man westerns and their music. It goes on and on . . .
Mother in laws are a world of their own. Mine guesses much worse than yours despite she lives averagely 6,000 miles off.


But your question is a can of worms: it's the basic point of program music. Rimski-Korsakov was climbing mirrors to deny he was programmatic when he wrote Sheherazade, as if he was ashame of that potent masterpiece: and, yes, my younger brother guessed that powerful theme was a ship at sea. I as a child took the omnipotent flow of Moldau for the description of heavy peasants' works. Our teacher was fighting hard with the two entwined themes of Borodin's Steppes. It's not always that easy.


Is program music music at all ? Would Bach accept all those storms Rossini, Verdi and the guys put in their operas ? And, as raindrops keep falling on our head, isn't there one thing called painting for that ?


One of my favorite painters, Lorenzo Lotto, XVI century, depicts St. Nick taken up to heaven while the sky is divided into a wonderful venetian blue and a stormy cloud pushed off by sea wind. That's descriptive. Or you prefer Toys Symphony ?
Just by the title, sure.





La Mer = The Sea